Is Marvel Sabotaging the Fantastic Four and X-Men?

Marvel said that they “aren’t commenting” on the situation with the Fantastic Four and X-Men, but characterized the apparent dispute as a “licensing arrangement.”

There are too many of these comic based movies planned and there are too many superheroes being crammed into each movie. Whatever happened to less is more?

They all just want one or two big holiday weekends to make a huge world wide profit. Then it doesn't matter if anyone really liked the movie, just as long as they felt compelled to see it.

Sure the license holders want to make it harder for the competition. They know they are playing musical chairs and eventually a couple of these blockbusters are just going to go bust when the public stays home one of those weekends.

If I remember correctly it was Marvel that sold the rights to these studios in the 90's to basically save Marvel from going bankrupt.

Marvel was able to get back some characters.

I find it funny to kill characters they do not own the movie rights for and also to completely change the fact that Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch are not Magneto's children and plus they are no longer Mutants And then to basically erase the X-Men and Fantastic Four from the "Secret Wars".

At the end of the day, it is the fault of Marvel, even though they did it to save Marvel and they obviously were not thinking of making movies at the time.

Hopefully one day Marvel can get back all their rights and do as they wish.

There is no FF Comic being published today, and they are the ones who started it all for Marvel during the Silver Age when Superheroes became popular again for the first time since the late 1940's.

The famous and once ubiquitous X-Men are featured in just one or two titles now (with one set in 1992 and based on a popular animated cartoon series from back then), and look for those to disappear as we get nearer to the release of an X-Men or Wolverine movie. There are Gambit and Deadpool solo movies on the way, as well, so don't look for them in too many comics either, going forward.

It seems insane until you realize just how little revenue the actual Comic books are generating compared to the other revenue streams. Most of the money is in the movies and licensing for apparel and the like. Indeed, many classic Marvel images from days' past, the kind used on t-shirts, for example, are being retooled to remove the non Marvel Movie Studios' rights-held characters from the image and to replace them with those heroes and villains Marvel does have the rights to.

The most jarring example of this I've seen so far is the iconic "Secret Wars" #1 cover from 1985 which has been used on many different items over the last three decades. The recent uses of them, however, remove any X-Men (Wolverine and Rogue were most prominent on it) and FF characters (The Thing was in the sweet spot) only to replace them with Marvel Studios-held characters on deck for new filmed adaptations.

I am a lifelong reader of Marvel's stuff, but I really have no opinion of this thing that is happening. There is no need for me to, as they (Disney) does not care what comic readers think. We are but a drop in the bucket where the earning potential of these properties are concerned. The only meaningful protest one could make, i.e., not buying the comics themselves, is not an option when the books are not being published.

I do, however, console myself with the fact, that try as they might, they can never change the past for those of us who were there.
Everything remains just where I left it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: chesspieceface,

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:
I am a lifelong reader of Marvel's stuff, but I really have no opinion of this thing that is happening. There is no need for me to, as they (Disney) does not care what comic readers think. We are but a drop in the bucket where the earning potential of these properties are concerned. The only meaningful protest one could make, i.e., not buying the comics themselves, is not an option when the books are not being published.

I get what you are saying about the comics, but the meaningful protest (if there was one) would be on the movies and related merchandise.

People don't like a lot of things, but they go along with them anyway. We as card collectors often have reservations about some product or some format, but we go along with it anyway. And once that thing is deemed successful, there are five more things done right behind it, in exactly the same manner. So in the end we have no one to blame but ourselves when trends we didn't like, but went along with anyway, take over.

I feel that way about all these superhero movies. I enjoyed the first few, including Iron Man and Thor, but then it got carried away with sequels and crossovers and Avengers. I can't stop them from being made, but I don't have to keep contributing to their success, and that is my protest.

I've not seen Avengers 2 yet (I still plan to), but I've heard more than one person say that it does feel kind of like a commercial for the upcoming round of movies.

I hope that's not true. If so, the so-called Marvel cinematic universe would have pretty much devolved into the "Puppet Master" series of movies from Full Moon back in the 1990s that would end right in the middle of a big scene with a graphic appearing onscreen telling you to be sure to see Puppet Master 4, coming soon, haha....

Charles Band was way ahead of his time.

Besides the Puppet Master series, there was the post-Blade Runner rip off Trancers and the pre-Underworld Sub-Species. And who could forget the insanity of Re-Animator. Plus about fifty "lesser" works. I think he is still cranking them out in a garage somewhere.

And yeah, I saw a lot of them. Did you know Helen Hunt starred in Trancers II? Bet it's not on her resume.

From Jack Deth's lady to the Academy Award in just 6 years!

A tireless promoter of his stuff, Band also issued more than a few trading cards based on his properties, and plenty of action figures, too.

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:

The most jarring example of this I've seen so far is the iconic "Secret Wars" #1 cover from 1985 which has been used on many different items over the last three decades. The recent uses of them, however, remove any X-Men (Wolverine and Rogue were most prominent on it) and FF characters (The Thing was in the sweet spot) only to replace them with Marvel Studios-held characters on deck for new filmed adaptations.

That is really sad. What genuine fan would want to buy a T-shirt with a chunk of the main characters replaced?

Here's a great article about the strategies involved here.
http://io9.com/whats-behind-ma...-men-from-1707514860

And a few examples are shown here, beloved original images drawn by Mike Zeck in 1985 (or so) versus the altered modern versions here used on T-Shirts, that are pre-"distressed" so the person wearing them can look even lamer.

The famed Secret Wars #8 Spider-man cover image most noticeably removes Mr. Fantastic from the background, and also the Human Torch while leaving his fire trail.



More glaring is the iconic Secret Wars #1 cover image, which loses all FF and x-Men and replaces them with Marvel Studios properties. At least they had the decency to caption the shirt with "Marvel Super Heroes" as opposed to the original "Secret Wars" logo as most of the additions, while existing characters from that mid 1980's era, were not featured in the original Secret Wars (itself created entirely to sell action figures).



One odd thing to me is that Black Bolt and the Inhumans are part of the Avengers Movie Universe, even though they first appeared in the Fantastic Four comic back (#45-47) in the mid 1960's.

Those various contracts Marvel signed under financial duress in the 1990's that determine which movie studio owns which backup characters were, when written, page-after-page of arcane legalese that likely no one paid any attention to, but now loom very large indeed in the makeup of the comic books themselves.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: chesspieceface,

quote:

Originally posted by chesspieceface:

Those various contracts Marvel signed under financial duress in the 1990's that determine which movie studio owns which backup characters were, when written, page-after-page of arcane legalese that likely no one paid any attention to, but now loom very large indeed in the makeup of the comic books themselves.

The newly bald James McAvoy posted a link to this:- http://comicbook.com/2015/06/0...en-and-fantastic-fo/
So that's probably as close to an official explanation as they are willing to go at the present.